Niles Eldredge - The Darwin Blogs

The Darwin Blogs – May 14, 2006.

Evolution at the Field Museum, Chicago.

I have just returned from several exciting days in Chicago, Illinois. I am happy to say that I was named the recipient of the 2006 “Award of Merit” from the Founder’s Council of the Field Museum. I am very honored to have received such a prestigious award from this very fine institution.

I have visited the Field many times over the years—to confer with colleagues, visit the trilobite collections, and to attend some important meetings that have been held there. My very first professional meeting—the First North American Paleontological Convention—was hosted by the Field Museum in 1969. And the famous 1981 Macroevolution Meeting—which I organized with Joel Cracraft, David Raup and Jeffrey Levinton—was also held at the Field Museum.

One of the highlights of this most recent visit was a tour through the newly opened permanent exhibition Evolving Planet. My guide was Lance Grande, Senior Vice President for Research and Collections and Curator in the Department of Geology. I’ve known Lance since his days as a graduate student at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Evolving Planet is a truly marvelous exhibition. I love it especially for its strong presentation of biological evolution. Exhibitions on evolution are just not all that common—and are all the more important in these days of constant attack by intelligent design creationists and the more old-fashioned, but just as poisonous, overtly Biblical creationists who are opening well-funded museums of their own. Evolving Planet and our own exhibition Darwin (in New York at the American Museum of Natural History until August 20, 2006—traveling to the Field Museum in 2007) are the two best exhibitions on evolution anywhere.

When it comes to evolution, Evolving Planet doesn’t mince words. It begins with a clear statement of what the word “theory” means in science: the most important general ideas in science—like “plate tectonics,” “special relativity,” quantum mechanics,” and—of course—“evolution,” are all theories. The visitor then departs on a fantastic walk through 4 billion years of the history of life on earth. You explore theories of the origin of life and learn of the living world that consisted solely of bacteria for a billion years or so. Major episodes in the evolution of life form the focal points demarcating the major divisions of the gripping story of life’s development through time—events like the rapid proliferation of major forms of animal life that mark the base of the Cambrian System; evolution of life on land; major steps in vertebrate evolution; and, of course, the six major mass extinctions that have so affected the course of evolution over the past .5 billion years. Evolving Planet pulls no punches, and identifies the Sixth Extinction as the human-caused degradation and outright destruction of the world’s ecosystems and species that is going on around us right now.

There is an excellent video that clearly explains natural selection—that all-important central process of evolution. Later in the exhibition, another video explores the process of speciation—how new species arise from old ones—another vital component of the evolutionary process.

The fossils on display are truly spectacular. Highlights include a baby sauropod dinosaur collected by former Field Museum Curator John Flynn (who has recently joined our American Museum staff)—and Lance’s own amazing collections of Eocene fossils from the Green River Formation of the American west. Best known for its fish fossils, this collection includes palm fronds, alligators, frogs, birds, and flowers—a true snapshot of the entire ecosystem in and around these ancient lakes.

But my personal favorite is the incredible computer-generated film of life in Middle Cambrian times as preserved in the Burgess Shale of British Columbia—the deposit made so famous in modern times by Stephen Jay Gould in his book Wonderful Life. It is exactly like being at an aquarium, looking through glass walls at animals swimming and walking around the sea bottom. Only these animals have been extinct for hundreds of millions of years! This technology makes even the best of modern museum dioramas seem old fashioned—it is if the dioramas have truly come to life in this wrap-around emulation of life in an ancient seaway.

By all means, when you are in Chicago, go see this exhibition. Meanwhile, there is an excellent website devoted to Evolving Planet at http://www.fieldmuseum.org/evolvingplanet/.

And my thanks again to the Field Museum and its Founders Council, for presenting me with the 2006 Award of Merit!

Niles Eldredge

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